In most of the ratings I've seen, either Ferment or Chrome emerge as the listener's choice for Catherine Wheel's
artistic peak. My own choice is quite clear: Chrome is a letdown to my ears, because what they hear is the
beginning of a drift away towards the restrictions of heavy, distor­ted,
tormented alt-rock from the relative freedom of psychedelia. I'm not saying
this sounds like proto-Nickelback — Dickinson and Futter are not that dismissive of musical creativity —
but simply that, for instance, when the loud section of the very first track
(ʽKill Rhythmʼ) kicks in, it just sounds like any slow, heavy, loud, draggy section on any record produced by an
artistically driven band with amplified guitars. And, if anything, And You Will
Know Us By The Trail Of Dead would do this kind of thing with more dedication
at the beginning of the next decade.

Try as I might, I can neither distinguish too
well between these songs nor memorize them; every­where you turn, it is the
same wall-of-sound blur that is neither riff-a-licious enough to qualify as
perfect hard rock nor atmospheric enough to qualify as effective heavy
psychedelia. It hangs somewhere in between these two extremes, satisfying
neither of the two fans in me, but still commanding a good dose of respect for
the effort. Without a doubt, though, Catherine Wheel are at their best here only when Dickinson clams up, and the
two guitarists (including some of their overdubbed clones) begin directing all
of their strength to the generation of sweet melodic noise. Any song here hits its peak then and
only then when the guitars begin to rip: for instance, ʽI Con­fessʼ sucks me in
around 2:31, when a grim metallic riff erupts out of nowhere, and after a few
bars a shrill banshee solo is laid across its back... too bad it's only for
about thirty seconds.

The formula is betrayed only once, on the aptly
called ʽFrippʼ: the song is not so much a tribute to King Crimson as it is a
conscious carry-over from Ferment —
more quiet, subtle, and atmos­pheric. The guitar melodies are more Gilmour than
Fripp, to be honest, but the combination of distortion, echo, and jazzy
angularity (especially when the wall of sound production is not there to
distract our attention) is admirable anyway, and fully convinces me that these
guys could have been masters of complex melodicity, had they not been so held
back by this strange adherence to the «shoegrunge» sound — which, frankly
speaking, begins to get on my nerves 5-6 minutes into the album... and this one
is almost an hour long.

The heavy, noisy sound deprives them of
personality even before they'd managed to properly establish it. It does not
help, either, that the first single off the album was a self-demeaning me­lancholic
brooding called ʽCrankʼ — and don't
try to tell me that the similarities with Radiohead's ʽCreepʼ are just a
coincidence. The song, relatively short by the standards of this album and focu­sing
more on a singalong chorus ("call me crank, my idea...") than on the
guitar interplay that justifies Catherine Wheel's existence, is clearly
market-oriented, but these guys have serious problems working the market —
likewise, the second single, ʽShow Me Maryʼ, actually speeds up the tempo and
makes you want to dance, with no memorable guitar parts to speak of but with
yet another repetitive chorus, this time building on what looks like a creepy
sexual innuendo (it is never explained what exactly Mary is supposed to show,
but if I ever learn that Mary is actually supposed to be the Virgin Mary...
well, I'd not buy that anyway). Both of these tunes can be pleasing, but if
Catherine Wheel built their entire reputation on this kind of material, I'd
have to think of them as C-grade, rather than B-grade artists.

Anyway, if it were up to me, I'd have cut out
most of the vocals (they are nominally pretty, but take too long to get to the
juicy parts), omitted the short singles (they don't do this band any real
justice), con­centrated on guitar jamming (most
of the tempestuous passages with multiple guitar overdubs are capable of
psychedelic magic, particularly in headphones), and slightly toned down the
metallic sheen — then Chrome would
really come out all black and polished. As it is, I'm not sure that the lasting
value of this record will easily allow it to stand out of the mid-Nineties
alt-rock muck in decades to come.

2 comments:

"As it is, I'm not sure that the lasting value of this record will easily allow it to stand out of the mid-Nineties alt-rock muck in decades to come."

Given that it seems to have stood out so far in the decades that have already come, I'm not sure how much weight that conclusion carries. Not that I'm in love with the album itself, but I don't think that it needs to worry about its reputation.